Venezuela’s right wing won a majority of seats in the country’s National Assembly on Sunday, signalling a major political shift that President Nicolas Maduro said would not suppress Latin America’s socialist revolution.

“This is not the time to cry,” Maduro said Sunday, conceding to opposition leaders from the Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD) party, who claimed 99 out of 167 seats, though they may gain more as the ballots continue to be tallied. “It’s the time to fight.”

The closely-watched election handed MUD a “simple majority,” while the ruling socialist coalition, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (USPV), held onto 46 seats. The rest of the seats are awaiting election results. It is the first time that the right wing has claimed a majority of seats in a legislative vote since the leftist leader Hugo Chavez ushered in a new era of socialist government in 1999.

David Smilde, a senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), told the Daily Beast Monday, “There’s no more status quo after the vote. Whatever happens now is a turning point.”

That includes the possibility of entrenched political divides paving the way for “a new authoritarian direction” for Venezuela, Smilde said.

While that would constitute a worst-case scenario, Mark Weisbrot, director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said the very least Venezuelans can expect now is “a lot of gridlock.”

“Even if the government wants to make economic reforms, Congress might not go along,” Weisbrot said. “The opposition doesn’t consider the Chavistas [Maduro’s party] a legitimate government.”